This invention relates to data processing systems.
There exists a wide range of applications for data processing systems capable of handling large data files efficiently and rapidly. Such files are typically organised as a sequence of records, each record containing one or more data items of various types. However, the large size of such files creates many problems. In particular, a large amount of storage space is required, and the time taken to search through such a file is usually quite long.
One object of the present invention is to alleviate such problems.